


My Ain True Love

by cryptonomicon



Category: War Horse - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - World War I, Hostage Situation, M/M, Mentions of Trench Warfare, Non-Graphic Violence, Prisoner of War, Slash, War Era, Wartime Medicine, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-30
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:05:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptonomicon/pseuds/cryptonomicon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain James Stewart was not a man who accepted failure or defeat at face value. He was also not a man to trust in his losses. Those features may be the only thing that saves him from a life spent alone after the horrors of war, as after his resounding defeat he goes back to the battlefield where his one irreplaceable treasure was lost.</p><p>Note: marked Explicit for intimate scenes in Chapter 4. (Which aren't terribly graphic but I'm a push-over.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Field Is Cut And Bleeds To Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ink_on_ice](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ink_on_ice), [aeon_entwined](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeon_entwined/gifts), [black_nata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_nata/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By the way this whole foo-fuckin' raddy-ha is all because of the work of two lovely people: [black_nata's gifsets](http://black-nata.tumblr.com/post/16213037143/au-captain-nichols-and-major-stewart-survive-the) and [aeon_entwined's collaborative work](http://brodinsons.tumblr.com/post/16400377127/and-then-amanda-went-above-and-beyond-the-call-of). They're both fucking awesome. Go read all of their things and love their tumblrs. You won't regret it.

When Major James Stewart had taken the vow to serve in his King’s cavalry, he had not intended that his first foray into the world of warfare would be a resounding defeat. He had not anticipated that everything he had learned about life up until that point would turn into a lie on the battlefield in Belgium, 1914. He could not have ever imagined what a loss like that could have looked like until it was staring him straight in the face.

That defeat, which looked like the dull gleam of his saber as he threw it down in the mud amidst the feet of a dozen scores of German soldiers, had a bloody, murderous face. That defeat, which looked like the grassy field that lay behind him now, coming into color and detail as the morning light rose into day, smiled in the face of the bloodshed - the field full of bodies: soldiers, both his own men and the comrades of the German soldiers surrounding him as he dismounted Topthorn, and all of their horses. The scene where men that lay dying atop the already deceased; enemies and friends alike, was a stage for this newly masked contender to dance upon. The horses that lay dying, miserable as the riders pinned beneath them, just an innocent bystander drug by force into the fray.

When he got down off of Topthorn, he silently accepted the reprimand that he deserved; the reprimand that _all of England_ deserved for the folly that they were blindly walking into when they accepted responsibility for their part in this war. He wondered if he would live to regret his decision to serve in his King’s cavalry, or if he would die still being proud of his choice.

_‘Who do you think you are?’_

Those words rang in his ears as the German soldiers corralled him towards the rest of the cavalry soldiers that had been left alive. He had thought that he was Major James Stewart, commander of men, leader of a mighty force. As he felt now, he was Jamie; just another soldier, humiliated and lost.

He turned his head when the thundering of footsteps drew near. Some of the other German soldiers that were scurrying about in the clean-up ran off, out to undoubtedly restrain it and whoever rode on it. Rather than retreat from the oncoming soldiers, though, the horse thundered on, and Jamie looked with mild interest as it blustered through a nearby clearing. Rider-less, he wondered how the beast still had the sense to run.

A realization stopped him in his tracks, but the pause went unnoticed to the Germans around him as they spread out to encircle the entire band of estranged cavalrymen rather than leave him alone. The horse that went on running, tramping and bolting and rounding and running, was no ordinary horse. It was _Joey_ ; who by no means was an unsuspecting beast. The fact that Joey was running around was only made worse by one factor, and it hit Jamie like the force of a locomotive spearing him in the chest. If Joey was rider-less, then that could only mean one thing.

Something horribly, _horribly_ wrong had happened to Jim. Dear, _irreplaceable_ , Jim.

There were only a few incremental seconds before he would have flown into a fit, regardless of the audience at hand. But before he had the chance, a heavy hand landed on his shoulder. He whirled to see who it was that dared to touch him, only to be infinitely more relieved at the sight. Rather than a calloused German, it was Charlie. Unarguably roughed up a bit, as they all were, but very much alive. And if Charlie was alive, maybe, just maybe, so was Jim.

“Jamie,” his comrade said to him quietly as the fuss that Joey was stirring up slowly moved away and quieted. “Thank God.”

“Charlie,” he responded stiffly, nodding and trying valiantly to stiffen his lip a bit as he faced his men. Just imagine if he had lost himself in front of them; it would have been an absolute debacle. And though he could not make the argument that, debacle or no, it would have been worth it to discern what had become of Jim, he could at least admit that there were more tasteful and silent ways to reach the same conclusions.

After the initial eye contact, Charlie declined to look at him. He was looking everywhere else; to the soldiers, to the forest, to the men encircling them. “I’ll be honest with you, Jamie. There aren’t many of us, and those of us that are here are understandably a bit shook up.”

He nodded, scrubbing a hand over his chin and tidying his mustache. “Understandable indeed,” he answered quietly, feeling for the first time that he wished he could go back in time and do things differently. That thought would frequent him often. “But we can rally ourselves as we know how; we do all have our orders.”

“Right.”

They stood in silence for a moment, before going to rejoin the rest of their vagabond company as the Germans began to move them. None of them spoke, but their lingering gazes and short nods indicated what all of them were thinking. They may have been defeated this day, but their task was far from done. Even though they had not been trained precisely in the art of anticipating failure, they had been trained on what to do under the risk of imprisonment. 

Jamie wondered how much he really feared God and the King anymore, regardless of how well he was following their orders. He also wondered if following their orders, however inane, would curry favor from them somehow. He would need all the favor he could get if his prayers, particularly the one in the forefront of his mind in that moment, were to be answered.

He had finished his headcount and face-search before he looked back to Charlie. The man was gray around the face, and was declining still to look at him. He didn’t question the man’s loyalty to their cause or his leadership, but he began to wonder if the man didn’t have something more personal and tragic to say. He hoped that, for both their sakes, Charlie didn’t. He wasn’t sure how well he could handle news of another loss like that today, or the confirmation that his unspoken loss was true.

“Charlie, have you seen-”

“Yes.” Jamie was startled for a moment, because under normal circumstances Charlie would never have spoken over him. Not ever. But after the quiet shock wore off, he realized that the look on Charlie’s face was absolutely crushed with despair. “Yes, Jamie, I saw him.”

His heart thundered much like the pounding of Joey’s hooves he had heard earlier. This time, however, it pounded so loud that it rang in his ears. He refused to let himself panic, but that didn’t mean his body would keep to his refusal of going into emotional shock.

“I saw him fall, Jamie,” Charlie continued after a tenuous moment. “I saw him hit the ground and not get up.”

Hanging his head in defeat was not an option, no matter how tempting it sounded at that point. In truth Jamie wanted to scream; he wanted to shout, he wanted to rage; he wanted to cry. Jim was not supposed to be one of the people that could die. They were supposed to ride out the war together, stride to victory and to honor, then retire from the damnable thing in peace to somewhere quiet where they could keep horses and let the world think they were old men hiding from memories of war.

_‘They have no idea we’re coming.’_

Jim’s voice was ringing clear as the Great Clock of Westminster’s bell. The words put a bitter taste between his teeth now, knowing that he had been right to be suspicious all along. Scruples, he’d assumed. _Laughable now_. Perhaps Jim had been having scruples; about just how intelligent this move of theirs was. But Jamie had been too confident, and Jim had been willing to listen to his command and authority as any good soldier was.

He had to swallow a great knot in the throat at the thought of what those orders had done to him.

“They’ll likely take the time to take useful items and means of identification from the corpses," he heard himself say, though his own voice seemed a thousand miles away from him. He wasn't even entirely sure it was his, or if it was someone else's that was just using his body as means to be spoken aloud. His thoughts at that moment were certainly not anything to do with something so logical. "Knowing the German reputation for efficiency, it's likely a report of the captured and dead will reach some ally of ours before we could even get back to Calais."

Charlie hummed at that, though it was not an encouraging sound. He was eyeing Jamie worryingly, as though the other man might come apart at any moment. His fears were well-founded; Jamie was about ready to. But his body just kept pressing on, proving both of them wrong as to the limits of what he could handle. Hadn't Jim said something similar once? About how there was more to him than a title or a rank appointed by someone else. That had been the day Jamie had first kissed him in the privacy of a curtained tea-room. He had tasted like cream and a good cigar; the first one smoked in good company of the first few hours of the new year.

Those hours of the new year, now well into its hearty middle, seemed like an eternity ago. "If we even get the chance to _escape_ , you mean. Let alone if we avoid getting shot _on our way_ to Calais."

"Cull out that attitude, Charlie," Jamie said quietly, feeling like it was the first thing he had actually intended to say. "We still have men who are dependent on our orders. When you've retired you can go back to that pessimism. But for the time being I recommend you keep it tucked away." He looked down to the man, hoping that his eyes would portray what he hoped to be a true understanding in his eyes. He wanted to look after the worst too, but he couldn't afford to. He _had_ to keep going. Even if everything was as serious and as grim as it looked, it was what Jim would have wanted. That thought stabbed him like a bayonet; sharp, and clear through his entire being, which seemed to be far shallower than he remembered. "We just can't afford to assume we've lost what he just haven't fought for yet."

The Lieutenant seemed to brighten somewhat at that, even if it was only in the despair having left his usually bright eyes now unclouded. "Right you are, Jamie," he said. When he looked around to his men, they seemed affirmed. None of them smiled, but their attention to his and Charlie's exchange showed that they had been heartened by his show of prowess. Perhaps Jim had been right; he was proving to be more in his actions now that he could have ever imagined himself capable of under order or decree of someone else.

Someone else, such as the small group of German soldiers that were swiftly approaching their little group. Less than three dozen of his men remained, if his count had added up to be at all correct. Three dozen pitted against the rest of the German battalion that had been waiting in the trees was a foolish endeavor, and even if a concerted effort of their united remainder pushed through the German lines and out into freedom, it would be a short-lived glory. The German guns were still armed, loaded, and ready to be used on whoever dared to cross them until they were disassembled. Though it was their sworn duty to do everything in their power to prevent their capture, that did not mean that they did not have to be intelligent about it. They were Englishmen, for fuck's sake: it's what they did.

Behind the small group of approaching Germans, the few horse-drawn ambulances that had ventured out into the field to retrieve wounded were returning. Surprisingly empty, all things considered. Then again, Jamie considered that they had succeeded in one effort at least. Those enemies whom they had encountered had been felled effectively; and thus the remainder of the Germans would be preoccupied with taking care of the clean up of the dead and the re-acquiring of supplies. Their work would probably take a good majority of the rest of the day, and Jamie worried to think of what would be done with he and his men in the mean time.

One tall German soldier strode forward ahead of the rest, his chin squared and his eyes keen. He was just a touch shorter than Jamie, and as the two men squared up to face one another, he felt that the man was the slightest bit put-off by that. Perhaps not in a nationalistic or hubristic fashion, but rather just the feeling displeasure at being out-sized by one's enemies.

Jamie could relate; the German officer's force was larger and stronger than his own had proven to be. And he sure as hell didn't like that.

"Some of your men are wounded," he stated. "Those who are will be sent on to the main camp with the ambulances now and shall be tended to there. The rest will remain here for questioning." The man couldn't be a day over twenty, Jamie realized. And though his blue eyes shone brightly, age was settling in the exhaustion showing underneath his eyes. This war would steal youth and resources from both sides, and as he stood there looking at his enemy and younger counterpart, he felt far less large than he had believed himself to be.

"Do you have anything to say?"

None of the men behind Jamie spoke, and he held to his duty and remained silent. The German in front of him didn't seem to mistake the silence for an insult, however. Jamie doubted that he understood that their silence was not equivalent to consent, but he was beyond the responsibility of elucidating the Germans on England's orders for its Yeomanry. He knew each and every character of each and every man behind him, and not a one of them would let their tongues wag. One of his many jobs in this instance, however, was not just to order and lead, but to provide an example. Soon enough rank would matter little to any of them; the Germans would not allot anyone favor. Before rank dissolved and their paths unerringly parted, he could at least impart them with a standard. A silent code, that would follow them to grave located somewhere in the uncertain future, where the King and God had better damn well honor them, or there would be nothing in this old world worth honoring anymore.

The young German soldier nodded curtly, and told him that all those who were to be escorted by the ambulances were to turn over their valuables and identification before turning away. A few of the others that had followed him in from the field stayed rallied around Jamie and his soldiers, undoubtedly to advise the process to make sure that they played fair. Jamie turned, keeping his face straight as he faced down the uncertain silence in his men. They knew their duties, but the parting was a bitter one for those who were wounded and knew it.

Jamie could see it in their eyes without even having to see where their ails were; in the forlorn and aggrieved expressions. He knew as well as they did that even if they missed an opportunity between now and when they were escorted to the camp later, it was unlikely that they would see each other again. Their time serving together had been short, but not forbidding of a strong bond regardless.

He looked to his men, nodding without a word. Those who limped forward, often with the assistance of others who were equally wounded, wore their sorrow openly on their faces. It would have shamed Jamie if he were to have seen it before. He would have scolded them, but he understood them too well now. He was unable to place himself above them, for fear of losing what humanity he had left, after the war had already done away with so much of it in one fell blow. But because he understood them, he could at least send them off as a true comrade. He looked each one of them in the eye, and held no judgement.

The effect of his silent rallying seemed to have a profound effect, because as they looked to him for guidance and found him assuring, they straightened themselves and drew up. Past their pain and past their undeniable suffering, they were strong men at heart. The exterior was something prone to showing defeat easily; the deep interior much harder to sway. He would show faith in their hearts, knowing that all of them were men of surety and honor, and would be so for as long as they could fight. It did not matter what shape that fight took; whether it was minor acts of inconvenience or explosive denial, the King and his judgments had not specified which was required. Jamie, now, would take whatever they were willing to give, even if he would likely not be there to see or share in it with them.

For the men that remained, able-bodied and sharp in their wits, he had different ideas.

"I never thought I'd see the day where I'd say this was it, Jamie."

Turning to look at his friend in surprise, Jamie felt another small part of him curl and wither on the inside. In all his hustle and bustle he had completely neglected to notice that Charlie was to be counted in the score of wounded. Now that Jamie looked, he could see in places where the man's khaki wool uniform was bled to red. Jamie was thankful for a moment that Charlie was even alive at all, considering the damage he had taken. Even now if their ways parted, he did not know what he would have done if he had lost both of his closest friends in a single charge, and he was thankful for the time he had been given.

"It isn't it, Charlie," he replied quietly, pressing a hand to his friend's arm. "I may not be sure of a lot of things in this life anymore, Charles Waverly, but I do know one thing. And that is that _this_ is not _it_." Always a one to be a bit sentimental about things, he could see the tears begin to gather in Charlie's eyes. The words hadn't been meant to make him sad, but that seemed to be their effect. "Always trust that there is more to life than _this_."

To his credit, Charlie did not cry. It was in his eyes, but he swallowed hard and did not let it reach his voice. "Right you are, Jamie," he said, though his voice seemed to get weaker as he spoke, as if he were admitting to a terrible and final goodbye. Jamie wished that he did not feel the same.

Jamie nodded as if he had authority over the matter. "You have your orders, Lieutenant Charles Waverly, and I have mine. Let's trust that they'll lead us home before they lead us to Kingdom Come."

Charlie even took off his hat to that, and gave a stiff salute before stepping away to clamber into one of the ambulances. He noted with some mild regret that it was Joey and Topthorn that were pulling the apparatus, and looked on for a moment as Joey turned to look back at him. Topthorn was distracted by one of the drivers on the other side of the vehicle, but Joey seemed particularly aware that Jamie was there. _'Carry on, Joey,'_ he thought, knowing that talking would do little good for any of them. _'I'm sorry that I've taken another rider from you.'_

The ambulance lurched forward as the driver flicked a whip, and Joey turned away from him. Jamie looked back to Charlie, whose head was hung and whose cap was still in his hands. When they started moving Charlie looked up at Jamie one last time, a grim and heartbreaking smile on his face. Jamie hoped that the war had not stripped from him the ability to smile genuinely, for that would be a loss to the world surely if it were to transpire. "Cheerio, Jamie," he said, his voice barely loud enough to carry over the clattering of hooves.

"Cheerio, Charlie."

He chose not to watch them leave, and instead turned to face the men that remained. Less than a dozen of them now stood behind him, and of those few even less of them were entirely unhurt like himself. More than half were in a minor way wounded, but had deigned themselves not wounded enough to go. The possibility remained that some of them may have remained only to make sure that he was not left alone with the Germans. He appreciated the chivalry, and, if he could, would happily implement it against their enemies if a time came that was right.

The small group of them that remained was escorted to a small outcropping of tents shortly thereafter, left generally uninformed of why they were being led or where they were going save for the general idea implied by the mentioning of interrogation earlier. Each of them were sat down, on a bench or for Jamie an actual chair, and paired off with a stern-looking but English-speaking officer.

Starting their interrogations with Jamie had been a poor choice on their part. He was far too well-versed in general literature, culture, and folklore, and was far too swiftly spoken of a man when he got going to be understood easily by even a native speaker.

Above all else, though, he was highly adept at _lying_.

Battle tactics and maneuvers became verses out of poems, or phrases from the Bible. Names of important military leaders or personnel became references to minor and passing characters in the published words of Arthur C. Doyle featuring his daring and sharp-witted hero Sherlock Holmes. He even managed to get away with calling the Queen a gwyllion at one point, which put all of his men into an uproarious fit of laughter.

The Germans were far less amused, especially in regards to the English using words and phrases that they oh-so-indelicately declined to include in their own dictionaries. Jamie's pity for them was minimal in light of his rather immense amusement. The interrogations, or, rather futile interviews at which point, ended shortly after the point where the rest of his men had caught onto the trend, and proceeded to plug every German ear in the vicinity with hideously sung lyrics of song and lies wide enough to stretch the seven seas.

Jamie was immensely proud of them.

The Germans did, however, after six or more hours of his instigated tomfoolery, get his name. Albeit in a rather rude way, which he bemoaned as they manhandled him into producing his identification papers. Those who were tasked with getting the documentation from him showed little sympathy, and he told them also just what he thought of _that_.

The clean-up of the battlefield was almost completed by the time the Germans had wrested the rest of their information from them, and from there the remaining soldiers began the march back to the main camp. Many of them had departed throughout the day as their tasks had consecutively finished, so the number remaining on site was predominantly few compared to earlier. They were not few enough to assure that Jamie or his men would have a decent enough window to escape easily, but their likelihood of even marginal success now was much greater than it had been earlier.

The sun was setting low in the west when at last the final members of the battalion that had crushed them that morning left the field of the dead. Over eighty Germans marched around them as their minuscule squad was marched into the forest. Many of them, however, marched before their small company, probably justly assuming that they would not risk something stupidly rash like trying to break out when they were so obviously outnumbered.

Even though it went against most logic, Jamie knew that he would never get a better opportunity to escape than this one. Call it premonition or foreboding, it mattered little to him. Time had been running out before, and it was ticking away its last moments now. It was move of his own volition, or be jostled around for the rest of the war waiting for another opportunity like the one had now.

All of the machine guns that had been set up in the trenches just inside the tree-line had been disassembled and taken away earlier, leaving only the supply-recovery teams. He was not confused on the matter of every enemy soldier being more armed than he was at that point, so he knew it was not going to be a clear break if they tried one. Some would get shot; others likely killed. If recaptured they would be killed anyway for the nuisance most likely. The most heavily armed soldiers had gone ahead also, taking their supplies back to be fed back into the collective unit for their next most important use, which was certainly not a handful of English soldiers about to raise a decent amount of hell.

Their mistake, Jamie supposed as he examined the small ring of soldiers that surrounded them still. A few had rifles, which would make fleeing a problem if any of them were particularly good shots. Each had a standard issue handgun, but with enough coordination those could be knocked out of the hand or even stolen. There were more soldiers behind them, but the likelihood was that they would sooner rush in to help their assailed comrades than take aim at a hectic fray. Missing and killing a fellow seemed like a poor comparison when a fist could accomplish the same end.

There really would be no better time.

"Gentlemen," Jamie said, keeping his voice only loud enough for what was necessary for his men to hear. He wouldn't risk saying anything that might be incriminating, but he would be as clear as he could manage so that those whom he parted with would not be left wanting for direction. "Let your honor precede you, and if the fates turn cruel, let your honor outlast you in your deeds." He did not look around to any of his men, and merely kept walking whilst he eyed a soldier to his left. He was a thinner man, but a good head shorter than Jamie himself. Usually he was not one to be fooled by size, but Jamie had a keen eye for knowing who was and was not stronger than he. This young man might have made a match in a fair fight, but Jamie would have won then, and he was going to win now because he had no mores about not playing a fair game.

"Lie back, and think of England and _rugby_ chaps," he continued, now looking over his shoulder just to assure himself that the rest of them had caught his drift. Many had, and were staring back at him with furious light in their eyes. Those who were not looking at him were eyeing their opponents. Only when all of their eyes rested on him did he nod shortly before looking back around.

Walking on in silence for even a moment longer felt like an eternity, but Jamie did for the sake of disillusioning the enemy into thinking their gibberish was but small talk. That postulate would be proven wrong shortly, and Jamie knew that he would not have to shout orders this time around. As soon as his men saw him make even the slightest move, they would battle their way into the fray as well.

The only hope on his mind was that this time, unlike the last, the Germans would really have no idea that they were coming.

A split second later, he had his shoulder buried into the torso of the young German he'd been walking a stride or so away from, and was well on his way to wrestling the man's pistol out of his hands. The roar of a fight broke out behind him, but he did not look back. As soon as the gun was in his hand and his little German target thrown harshly to the ground, he broke into a sprint. Weaving between the trees, he prayed that the descending haze of twilight would mask him at a far enough distance. He heard others running into the forest in different directions, and shouts as the Germans made to hasten after those they thought they could reach.

Taller than most and with a sprinting stride like his, not to mention the general head start he had above most others, he doubted only vaguely at his ability to escape successfully. Whistling shots rang around him as he wove in and out of the trees, some catching on the wood and others screaming past his ears. The further he got, though, the fewer the number of bullets sent to pursue him.

That did not change that it felt like an eternity before was entrenched in the lonesome silence of the forest. Even then he did not stop running for fear of some particularly dogged assailant or raiment coming after him, but rather made his swift and hectic way back towards the way they had come. It was a roundabout path he took, but he knew that to the west was where his allies waited. Going further ahead into the forest and towards the east where the larger German camp waited was folly. And even if a daring scout came upon him, he would much rather deal with a scout even at distance than an army.

It was deep into the dark of night when the trees cleared ahead of him into a moonlit field, still littered with the shadowy figures that the dead had become. He slung himself down into one of the short trenches that had been dug for the guns that had felled his military effort, breathing heavily through his nose and trying to listen further than he was able to see if he could discern any sound that could be a pursuer or even anything remotely of the like.

Silence was the most blessed thing to have ever met his ears in that moment.

Crawling up and out of his makeshift hiding place, Jamie ducked out carefully towards the field. He surveyed the treeline for a long time before he was satisfied that he could see nothing potentially lurking in the shadows. Still, when he strode out into the meadow it was with great caution and the most silent footsteps he could manage. Now that the deed was done and his tenuous freedom earned, he found himself inanely drawn back to the mass grave site where many of his men now lay.

One in particular whose body he would not allow to go not laid to rest.

He knew that it was a stupid risk to be taking after he had achieved the only true victory he had fought for that day, but there were some things that he was not willing to ignore. His heart was wounded enough as it was, and to not see this one deeply dug issue to peace would eat at him for the rest of his life, however long or short it turned out to be.

Finding Jim's body took him longer than he anticipated, but he did not regret the time he risked, and would go fist to fist with anyone that questioned his judgment on the matter. After that day, all other risks seemed minor and unimportant; but glorified trivialities when compared to the reward that had come with that one heart-felt decision he had made.

The reward of his efforts had not appeared to be such when he had first come upon Jim's body. He had not even been sure that it was Jim until he realized just what the piercing moonlight had done to his perception of colors. Red was but a dim gray, and golden yellow almost white, and only when he decided which was right and which was an illusion did he find what he was looking for.

When he knelt, it was as an ancient man; destroyed and searching for resolution to a problem that had but one answer. When he wept, it was as a young boy; lost and alone in a world he thought he would share. When he breathed, it was as an animal; tortured and desperate for death.

Death was not given to him, despite his wishings, and in the moments of living a thousand miserly lifetimes in one, he succumbed to the urge to coddle himself and cradled in his arms the one person he had ever wished to protect. He rested his cheek against the curls on Jim's forehead, his tears mixing with the blood there, and prayed. If not for a rescinding of damage already done, then for a swift ending to a story that had run its course.

"I'm sorry," he said. He said it time and time again, feeling that if he said it enough Jim would hear him and understand that it was true, even from beyond his mortal capacity. "I'm so sorry."

Tepid numbness washed over him after so long spent grieving, and he drew away to kiss Jim's forehead. Just shy of the hairline was the wound that mottled his normally radiant hair with blood, and Jamie wished that he had at least some water to spare so as at least to clean the signs of war from him. They had never suited Jim's fair face, and they suited it even less now that war had led Jim to a death so unjustly timed. "We were supposed to live forever, you and I," Jamie said to him, letting him rest in his lap. "Don't think I'll let you back out on me, no matter where you've gone."

He froze and relived that moment in time in his memory for the rest of his life. In truth it did seem to him that time had stopped, and that the moon that had reached its zenith would remain there forever, tethered to the stars she loved so much. Because in that moment, Jamie, unlike any other to whom he ever spoke from that day forward, was graced with what he could only ever divine to call a _miracle_.

One of his lonesome and searching hands had strayed to rest on the chest of the man he loved. It was a gentle search, one that had no thing in particular that it was seeking. But when the guilt and the sadness and the doom inundated him and left him completely still, he became very aware of a particular movement that was not his own. His hand, very slowly and very shallowly, was rising and falling. It was such an incremental thing that he thought for certain that it was a false impression. With the impression in his whirlwind of thoughts, he leaned down, pressing an ear next to where his hand rested.

The heartbeat he heard was like the hand of God resting on his shoulder, and a relief as devastating as the Great Flood crashed through him. His mind was not bothered with the _how_ or the _why_ ; only with the truth that his prayers had been answered. It took him quite a bit of arranging, prodding, and brushing up on minimal medicinal knowledge to get his mind to move in a linear fashion again, and the moment it did his hands were in a flurry of motion. Seeking out the wounds, of which there were several, checking the severity of the damage, which though obviously not fatal was substantial, and attempting to rouse the fallen, which required all of his strength in trying to keep from inevitable hysterics.

Eventually Jim roused and opened his eyes, looking at Jamie with bewilderment, pain, and after a moment of recognition had passed, softly heartbreaking pleasure in his eyes. "Knew you'd come back for me," Jim said in a voice as distant as the thunder rolling over the hills on the horizon where a storm was slowly blotting out the patchwork collection of the stars.

He didn't care that he was crying, or if it showed on his face or in his voice. He didn't care because Jim didn't care, and if Jim didn't care, then at that moment it was not something worth worrying himself over.

"I'll never leave you, Jim," he said. "Never again."


	2. The Cannonballs Fly Round My Head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By the way this whole foo-fuckin' raddy-ha is all because of the work of two lovely people: [black_nata's gifsets](http://black-nata.tumblr.com/post/16213037143/au-captain-nichols-and-major-stewart-survive-the) and [aeon_entwined's collaborative work](http://brodinsons.tumblr.com/post/16400377127/and-then-amanda-went-above-and-beyond-the-call-of). They're both fucking awesome. Go read all of their things and love their tumblrs. You won't regret it.

“Did we lose Jamie?”

He bit back a stray tear that was stinging his eye, taking a deep breath to steel himself as he fought for a meager smile to grace his trembling lips. As he looked down at Jim now, he wondered how before they had met how he had ever thought he would be able to go on living without Jim in his life. The prospect of it now certainly seemed an impossibility. “Not this one, Jim,” he said, lifting the man gently into the closer confines of his lap. “Not today.”

Jim’s blond brows furrowed, the tip of one dyed near black in the starlight by the blood stain lined from his brow. He leaned his head heavily into Jamie’s shoulder, tucking his cheek against the Major’s neck. “I’m sorry Jamie,” he mumbled miserably, a strange ash of exhaustion on his voice. As he wrapped an arm around his fellow soldier’s shoulders, he realized that it was the sound of a dead man talking.

“Sorry?” he repeated, his voice tight and striking high in his disbelief. He nudged Jim’s head with his shoulder to get the other man to look up at him. Jim did, but his usually bright eyes were dull and lost as they gazed up at him. The smattering of stars that mapped the night sky above them was reflected in the glassy surface of his pupil. “There are many wondrous things you are in this life, Jim Nicholls, and sorry need not ever be one of them.”

One of Jim’s lovely long-fingered hands reached out and took a shaky grip of the lapel of Jamie’s coat. “Okay Jamie,” he said weakly. “Okay. Just don’t leave me.”

Jamie took a deep breath and gave a furtive glance to the meadow around them. A gust of wind blew in the sharp scent of an approaching rainstorm, the crown of which he could see catching moonlight in the distance.

“Never again, Jim,” he repeated, more sure of the fact every time it came out of his mouth, “that much I promise.” 

He handled his fellow gently back to the ground, laying him out so that he could attempt to do something about the other man’s wounds. Jim rested uneasily, as though now that he had been awakened from the preliminary vestiges of his death sleep he was not keen on the idea of slipping back into them. Jamie kept one hand resting comfortingly on the other soldier’s stomach as he did his best to poke and prod his way gently around the expanses of bloodied coat Jim was sporting.

He damned under his breath the organization and efficiency of the Germans, and not for the first or last time in his life. It was their policy to make as short of work as possible of every problem they ran into. This included the looting of the dead for anything that could be assimilated as supplies. They had taken Jamie’s upon his interrogation, but they had also made clear the bodies of the dead: Jim’s believed corpse included. All soldiers had, after all, small wound kits in the lining of their coats. Or at least, they usually did, but then Jamie supposed that nothing about this instance was usual and that he should really stop expecting it to be.

Either way, he would have killed to get a sterile patch of gauze and some clean water in that moment.

A stray thought made its way unbidden into Jamie’s thoughts as he paused to consider what to do. He looked down to Jim’s face as the other man struggled to keep still without returning to unconsciousness: that same unconsciousness which had fooled a German soldier into thinking him dead. But there was the rub: _had_ a soldier thought Jim dead when he looted him? Or had, perhaps, someone shown him mercy? Had some young German come upon him, seen the agony on Jim’s fair face, and in turn seen his own inevitable future at hand?

Jamie would never know, nor was he sure how much he liked that thought. It made him ponder over the humanity and fallibility of their enemy: made him worry about those young boys who were suffering the same fate as their own boys, just on the opposite side of the barbed-wire lines.

Shucking off his wool coat, he muttered to himself, “That’s about the only thing I can promise anymore.” He took his teeth to the shoulder seam and clamped down as his hands pulled in an attempt to rip the seam. The thick stitching was tough to undo, but under the pressure the threads soon tore, rending the sleeve from the rest of the jacket. The lining on the inside was barely an issue to tear after that, loathe as he was to destroy something to craftily made.

From there he tore the sleeve and its lining carefully into as long of strips as he could make. Admittedly his sleeve was not as clean as their packages of gauze would have been, but the wool would bind and insulate well, as well as absorb some impact when they inevitably had to move. It was also, sadly, all he had, so there wasn’t much point in waffling over what other options there could be under better circumstances.

Just before he made to open up Jim’s own coat to get access to the shirt underneath, and in turn the wound beneath that, a cool hand rested on his. He leaned over, looking worriedly at the fallen man’s face. Jim’s eyes were still open, and there was a slow-smoldering spark of life in them yet.

“That’s more than enough for me, Jamie,” he said quietly, though his voice no longer held the dying little rasp to it that it had been fraught with earlier. Jamie tightened his grip on that h and, and dipped down to kiss him while the opportunity lasted. And even though their time was short, he refused to let this one thing be rushed. It had always been that way with their kisses; be them passionate or chaste as this desperate little one was now. It was that refusal to hurry that was usually Jamie’s only hopes of getting Jim to slow down, but now all he wanted to do was will all of the warmth in his body to go through that kiss. Jim could surely use it now more than he.

After too short an eternity he parted the two of them, his free hand reaching up to brush a bloodied lock of hair from Jim’s high brow. “I can’t promise this won’t hurt, much as I would like to be able to,” he warned. “Nor do I know just how far we’ll be able to get with you as you are. But by God, we are going to try.”

Jim only nodded, and Jamie returned to his work with a tight jaw. He remembered what a horrible mood he had been in the whole week that Jim had been bedridden with a cold earlier that spring. All of the men had assumed that it was because he hadn’t wanted to shoulder the workload left over in Jim’s absence. As Charlie had discovered, that was far from the case. Worry was what had soured Jamie’s mood, just as now in how it was making his hands shake as he bound the hideous tear that a bullet had pulled through Jim’s narrow side.

“It’s better than the alternative,” Jim said with a wince as Jamie pressed just a hair too hard for him. “Better than a lot of the alternatives, actually,” he finished after a moment.

“Right o’,” Jamie confirmed stiffly. He didn’t like having to think about any of those alternatives, no matter how close or far away they were from reality.

When he had finished dressing the wounds as best he could, he drew Jim’s shirt and coat back over him, hoping to keep as much of the nightly chill out as possible. With a furtive glance up he confirmed the fear that had been hedging over the horizon since he had arrived back at the clearing. A storm of gruesome proportions was coming, and the only hope they had lay far ahead of the dappled forests from whence they had marched that morning, though the direction remained true straight into the head of the oncoming thunderheads.

The fact that those forests and lands ahead of them now lay under siege by rain only figured. One heavenly stroke of luck had been afforded to him; asking for more than that seemed almost greedy of him given what he had gained in return.

Tucking an arm around Jim’s shoulders, he helped the other man up carefully. He then hoisted the other man to his shaky feet, as quickly as he dared to given the other man’s condition. The look of pained concentration on Jim’s face gave him pause, and he waited for the other man’s pallor to fade a few shades before moving them along towards the tree line opposite where the Germans had set up their artillery earlier that day.

Ducking through the unsalvageable vestiges of the German camp and his own cavalry, he felt like a boy again: playing some hide-and-capture game that had somehow supplanted itself as his life as an adult. Jim’s weight on his shoulder kept him grounded, and he was very careful to keep his pace from quickening beyond the other man’s crippling limits. Dragging him would not make either of them better for wear.

The first splatters of rain were catching them on the head by the time they reached the trees, but Jamie pressed them forward through the thicket. The less time they spent under the trees, the less severe the storm would be by the time they would be forced out into the open. Waiting out the storm in safety was an unwise option because if they found safety under the trees, that meant also that so could someone else. Someone, in all likelihood, much less sentimental to their cause than even the mercurial Mother Nature could be.

There was a rustling sound ahead of them in the high branches of the trees, and Jamie jerked them behind the shelter of a wider tree. Jim grunted in pain and leaned on him heavily, and he helped steady the other man as his ears strained to listen over the sounds of the rain penetrating the forest roof.

A rumbling hoot sounded from a surprisingly short distance away, and it startled both of them as a swooping ethereal form flew past them and back out into the open field they had just left. 

“What’s a barn owl doing out here?” he said to himself as he watched the bird’s great silhouette disappear in the distance behind a sheet of rain strung out into silver threads by the speed with which it fell from the sky.

“Maybe it’s looking after us,” the man draped over his shoulder suggested groggily. The hand that Jim had slung around Jamie’s shoulder clenched tight into the fabric of his coat as he struggled to get a handle on his pain. Jamie was sorry to have jostled him, but it had been a necessary maneuver when a risk could have been genuinely upon them.

Jamie laughed softly, taking a moment to rub a soothing hand down Jim’s back. “I hope we spooked it off actually,” he admitted in a whisper.

Jim looked at him curiously, his eyes a bit brighter. “Why do you say that?”

“Because,” Jamie grunted as he hauled them back into motion. They couldn’t afford to dally, much as he would have liked to let Jim rest, “barn owls are an omen of death in some cultures. And today of all days we certainly don’t need one following on our tails.”

Surprisingly, Jim chuckled then, though it was a sad, grim little thing that paled in comparison to his usually sprightly laughter. Jamie tightened his grip on the man without thinking, wanting to keep him close to his heart and away from whatever sad thoughts he was fraught with. 

“You can’t really say that he’s in the wrong place for what he supposedly represents, Jamie,” he said after a moment, his voice barely audible. The man’s golden head turned back to look after where they had come into the thicket, and where in turn the owl had gone out. “I bet he’s just trying to find a way out of all this death and destruction, just like us.”

The Major pulled his companion up alongside him and away from their former path. Sighing as he looked out over the open ground before them now at the end of the thicket, he pondered over what to do. The darkness and the rain would help mask them from any spying eyes, but any open ground was always a risk tactically. Even if they could reach the higher grasses that would be cresting the hills shortly along would be a great advantage.

When Jim shivered against his shoulder, another grim factor came back to his mind. Jim was still severely wounded, and the plummeting temperature in conjunction with the damp would pose to him a very serious danger. Pneumonia was a sharp-fanged predator: one who had no care for discerning who it was that was bitten and left to be.

“I’d bet my wages that he’s doing a better job at it than we, Jim my boy,” he grumbled unhappily. “We’re going to have to get wet if we want to get through this mess.”

“I’d rather be with you and sloughing through this countryside soaking wet than dry and lying to die alone,” Jim replied with far too much spring in his voice for such a grim idea as he had mentioned. He even laughed a moment later. “I really don’t even care if we don’t make it all the way back to London, Jamie. I’ve gone to Hell, and every step back is worth its distance in angel hair so long as it’s with you.”

He hurried them out of the forest’s reaching fingers, though their awkward hobble was not nearly enough haste for his frayed nerves to accept. The rain soaked through their coats in moments, leaving them sopping and squelching against each other as they struggled to muddle through the muck that was forming on the trampled ground as it gorged itself greedily on the spoils of the sky.

The distance to the tall grasses they had started off in that morning was a battle fought in inches spread out over eons of struggle. Jim did a surprisingly valiant job of carrying on in spite of his wounds, but Jamie could feel the clamminess on the other man’s skin that had nothing to do with the rain every so often when their cheeks would brush together.

The world dimmed down around them to a curtain of gray for a time, featureless save for the turf beneath their own feet.

Jamie spotted it first: the wall of monstrous wheat from whence they had plotted their waylay of the enemy. It reached far above their heads, and would serve as plenty of cover for as long as they could need it.

The monstrous grass was, however, pathetic cover from the rain. It was substantial enough visual cover to be permissible, but Jamie wasn’t given as much comfort by it as he would have expected. Each patter of rain on the stalks and leaves sounded like the footfall of a German boot, and each swaying whisper of the whiskered heads in the wind a gun parting the crop to expose them.

A wild clap of lightening flashed its fractal ivory fangs against the tumultuous sky. The flare of it was so bright and so close that the whole expanse of his sight seemed to return to daylight for a split second. As the fangs were sheathed back behind the lips of the clouds the daylight flickered in time with the thundering footsteps of the Gods as they walked along the sky, and everything around them sank back into the darkness of night.

Both he and Jim froze for a moment as the panicked shriek of an animal rose from somewhere beyond their sight in the waves of the grass beyond.

“It’s a horse,” Jim breathed next to him. Jim’s sharp eyes looked to him for a striking moment, and he realized that Jim was right. He really probably wouldn’t have been able to attribute such a noise to a horse, in spite of the fact that he had been working with them for years enough to probably know better. “Jamie, if the horse is healthy we have to find it. It might be our only shot.”

“Right, right,” he muttered back harshly, every hair on the back of his head standing on end in spite of the rain, “Unless of course there’s someone _on_ the horse.”

“Don’t be dense Jamie,” Jim nipped back, completely unafraid of trying him toe to toe when it was just the two of them. “You heard how close it was. If there was someone on it they would have made noise when the horse panicked, even if it was just to calm it down.” Jamie sat silent, still unsure. “That, and the Germans aren’t stupid. What point would there be in sending out an able-bodied man and horse alone into a thunderstorm to snuff out a couple of British officers _if_ he came onto any at all.”

Sighing in resignation, Jamie knelt down, helping to set Jim in a kneel that wouldn’t agitate his wounds too much. “Stay right here,” he whispered sharply, pointing an authoritative finger at the other man’s nose. “And if I give a shout, you have to promise me that you’ll run.”

Jim only looked at him searchingly, and Jamie started for a moment when he realized that the rain had washed away the blood from Jim’s face. “Do you really think I could without you?”

He turned with a thin frown pressed to his mouth and stepped away into the grass. The quiet without Jim at his side was disturbing, and his heart sped up a few paces as he struggled to fight the urge to go back and bring the other man with him. Even if that was abhorrently foolish, it felt better on his heart. Nevertheless, his mind warned against the dangers of a startled horse. It would have been all too easy for the animal to rear, and likewise for Jim not to be able to get out of the way in time, especially in the state that he was in.

When he spotted the lumbering creature’s shadow through the grass, he gave up on worrying about it. Jim certainly had seemed sure about the decision, even if it was not exactly in a way that Jamie would have preferred.

He straightened up and wove through the grass slowly, doing his best to make audible noise to not spook the beast any further. When its phantom white mane came into view, he clicked his tongue, attempting to gently get its attention. Not all horses were trained to respond to that signal, but at least it was a place to start.

Surprisingly, the horse whirled on a dime in response to his quiet call, its ears perked to attention as it faced him. Its long pale figure stepped towards him, nostrils flared. There was no hesitance in its step as it neared Jamie’s hesitantly outstretched hand. After finally spotting the full regiment of riding gear that the horse had on its back, Jamie realized with a start that the long pale horse belonged to no other possible man but Charles Waverly. By some twist of fate, Charlie’s mount had gotten away when poor Waverly himself had not.

Topthorn’s and Joey’s fates were inverted, and as much as Jamie cared for his animal, he would not have traded places with him for all the bullets in Germany.

It took very little to get Waverly’s horse settled. By simple logic, Jamie undoubtedly smelt familiar, and his methods of calming a horse were also likely similar to Waverly’s: Jamie had been the one who had taught Charlie in the first place.

He took the creature by the reigns and led him back the way he had come, still whispering kind things and combing his fingers through the horse’s long gray bangs. The poor thing was just as soaked as they were, down to the leather strappings he was burdened with. 

When he got back to what he believed to be close to where he had left Jim, something in him flickered with panic. He would have sworn that this was at least within a spit’s distance from where he’d left the other man, but with the wind rustling the towering blades in the dark he could not tell if he had diverted from his previous path or not.

“Jim?” he said quietly, trying not to get his tone mistaken for one of alarm, even if it wouldn’t have changed Jim’s end behavior. “Jim, I’ve got him. Tell me where you are,” he said a bit louder.

“Walk to your left a few paces,” Jim’s voice came back, and Jamie smiled with relief. If it was a mistake mended by a few paces then it was one worth making when compared to what other punishments sat at the end of more grievous errors in judgment.

It was about four paces before he could see the bulk of Jim’s huddled form in the grass. He pulled the horse forward and found Jim’s gaze waiting for him expectantly.

The other rider’s eyes widened for a moment at the sight of the horse. “That’s Charlie’s,” he said, surprise obvious as it sat on his face. “That’s Blenheim.”

Jamie patted the horse’s cheek. It lowered its head to get a feel for Jim’s newly introduced presence, but again seemed fit with knowing them both well enough to remain calm. “Yes it is,” he confirmed sadly. “I just wish poor Charlie himself could have come with us. No offense to Blenheim here; I’ll certainly save us from more than one spot of trouble. But…” He trailed off, shaking his head miserably.

“So he survived then?” Jim asked, sounding much brighter than Jamie expected him to be at the prospects such as he had implied. The other man’s enthusiasm just didn’t seem to want to be stifled, even as Jamie helped him up. “How many others did?”

Jamie gave pause for a moment, realizing that Jim had no idea what had become of the rest of their squad after the failure of the initial charge. He was grimly preoccupied with being wounded and unable to move.

“Not many,” he answered, looking between Jim and the saddle for a moment. “Are you sure you can even get up there?” he asked, worrying over more than just that. Jamie would have to get up there with him, because they certainly couldn’t afford the time wasted in walking. And even though Jim had been pulling a magnificent fight thus far, a pale wash was coming back over his lips that made Jamie not want to leave him up there alone. Even if the man tried his hardest, Jamie doubted that he’d be able to stay conscious for their entire ride. He worried also just what that ride would do to agitate Jim’s wounds, and just what they would have to do when Jamie ran out of coat to shred.

“Do I have an option?” Jim offered back with a weak smile. Jamie sighed and opted merely to help him up rather than voice the fact that there really were no other choices to be had. He didn’t like having to pigeon-hole himself into a grim truth like that.

It was a struggle, but Jim was indeed up after a moment, even if he did look a bit gray around the neck. The lean man kept a hard grip on the wet leather of the saddle to steady himself as Jamie hopped up behind him. Jamie settled in as best he could, but knew that there could only be so much comfort to be had in a cavalry saddle normally, even less so when it was occupied by two riders rather than just one. With the added weight of two men it was also inhumane for them to push the horse too hard, so Jamie merely set them off at a clipped walk.

Once they had all settled into one another, Jim leaned back into him with a stiff sigh. Jamie wrapped an arm around his stomach, both to keep the binding on the wound stable and to offer what little comfort he could. He wished that he could have Jim back at home, wrapped in blankets, warming in front of a fire, and curled in his lap like a cat. But this wasn’t jolly old England, where the kettle would be put on at four and all the worries of the world handed away for a few moments of creamy privacy.

Jamie sighed back and rested his forehead on Jim’s shoulder. He drank in the tang of rain, soaked wool, and gunpowder from his skin, but did his best not to think. For now he needed to trust his conditioning. He needed to recall the maps he had pored over for months, pick out what could be the safest route, and do his best to get them both there alive. He knew that in his own heart, leaving Jim behind, even dead, had never been an option for him no matter his destination. He could not bring himself to hope that Jim might think otherwise.

Now that he thought about it, if Jim had come back to the field of battle and roused Jamie from the first winks of a death sleep after a daring escape, he too would be unerringly loyal to the side of his love. No regard for danger, or ruin, or death, in that instance would make him sooner let go of Jim than it would make him re-welcome death into his breast.

He blinked the rain and tears from his eyes as he looked up and took a shaky breath. The landscape was still a barely discernible slur of darkness, but very faint features he could make out over the hoods of the grass. He guided them through the last stretches, and when they breached the far end of the crop, the field ahead of them was showing the first shafts of naked starlight as the clouds weaned away.

Soon enough they reached the end of the rain over their heads, and both of them simultaneously gazed up to find the stars nearly blindingly bright in contempt of the weather that had disturbed their reign over the darkened world.

A spatter of water to his face brought Jamie back down from the heavens to find Jim running his fingers through his soaked hair in an attempt to tease it into drying. He chuckled and ducked back to keep from getting hit by the stray drops again, in turn running a hand through his own hair much the same way. The starlight cast them all in an almost blinding silver glow, and he urged the horse on to a swifter gait. Though they could not see far ahead of them, it was not beyond the realm of belief that they could still potentially be seen.

That aside, he knew that eventually the starlight would wax off in the hours before dawn, and they would be left almost completely in the dark. They would need to cover as much ground as they could while there was light enough for the horse to see, and for them to be able to spot potential shelter when they could use it.

It would be in those few sparing hours of total darkness before dawn when they could let Charlie’s poor horse rest as well. He was a fine steed, of that there was no doubt, but there was only so swift and so far that he could be expected to go with two riders. They would likely also have to rest at points during the day, but he would postpone those until the circumstances brought with morning’s light became more transparent. For now they were an opaque and unanswerable question, and for now he was happy to leave them that way.

He kept his arms close around Jim as they rode, willing his clothes to dry and his warmth to seep into the other man as soon as possible. The wool of their coats would take a while to dry, but even before then Jamie was pleased to feel his warmth wear off on the other man. Jim did his best to keep alert, as he was seated in front, but there was truly very little to see for a long while. Dim grasping figures of trees would reach close and shy away as Jamie led them on, before he finally surrendered them to the grasp of a large glen when the darkness was so intense he nearly drove the horse into a bush.

He got off and settled Jim down after him, tying Blenheim in a spot where he hoped he wouldn’t be spotted from a distance. He and Jim settled, taking watches for as long as they could stay awake. Jamie took the first one, wanting to be sure that Jim would still be warm and awake enough to not be a health risk to himself. He wasn’t due to be getting much sleep anyway; he still had the sounds of machine guns and dying horses in his ears.

Jim was shivering against him when the first golden daggers of dawn pierced their way through the armor of darkness, and undoubtedly not just from the cold. He drew the other man to his shoulder, rubbing his chest to instill some warmth to the flesh there. It roused Jim like he had intended it to, and though he longed to do nothing more than let the man rest, he knew that these circumstances were not the ones to leave Jim to sleep in.

Heaven knew that, in Jamie’s eyes, Jim deserved to sleep on the bed of the King before he deserved to sleep out in the cold, covered in mud, blood, and the smell of death.

By the time the dim gray of morning had risen, they were on their way again, though Jamie was careful to keep them close to wooded places where they were less likely to be noticed. As the features of the landscape rose into color, he re-oriented himself, doing his best to navigate the landmarks he had taken to studying before their endeavor. He hoped that what knowledge he retained of the maps he no longer had access to would get them to Calais, or even remotely close. Even if they could run into another British infantry, an Allied camp, anything or anyone that wasn’t German, they might just be able to make it.

The cold had Jim sluggish and unresponsive for quite a while, and though Jamie did his best he could do little to keep the other soldier from shivering. Hastening would not guarantee their success, but it would certainly give them a much wider margin of potential success. Eventually the sun was above the horizon, and though its warmth was long in coming, it did at last begin to penetrate them from its far point in the distant sky.

It was likely hours before they stopped to pause, but Jamie would have easily been convinced that it was lifetimes. Each rolling hill was a century, each tree a passing decade. He didn’t care to count them, not when he felt like they would age him into dust before he reached the end of them all. Jim was quiet against him, his blue eyes open and observing but glossed over with distant thought.

A thunderous boom from somewhere in the distance made them both stop. The horse stilled, its ears pricked towards the depth of the distance from which the sound had come. It was nowhere near to them, but that didn’t keep them from imagining the accompanying shouts and gunfire. It didn’t keep them from shivering at the thought that somewhere else, not even so far away, a war was being fought without them.

Jamie pushed them forward, and it was well into evening before Jim finally spoke to him. They’d kept their silences if only for the need to not waste energy. Jamie didn’t want to tire Jim, and Jim didn’t want to be tired enough to risk falling back into that dark little space that inevitably consumed everyone. When he did speak, though, Jamie found that he was less than encouraged.

“I’m cold Jamie,” he muttered, and he had to say it twice before Jamie could even hear him.

He chuckled stiffly, if only to himself and he nudged his chin against Jim’s shoulder. “Don’t be absurd, Jim my boy,” he said, doing his best to keep his voice bright even as the coiling serpent of panic began to stir in his gut. If he could just rouse Jim’s humor, that bright little laugh, or a hint of that smile, it would be worth the lie it took to get there. “It’s hot as dickens out here. Might as well be Africa, can’t you feel it?”

Jim did chuckle, though it was so despondently that Jamie was surprised at it; likely more than he should have been. “God I wish, Jamie,” he said. “God help us.”

Though he felt marginally bad for urging the horse on faster after so long of a ride, he did so anyway. The trot picked them up along far better, but Jamie felt the press of a deadly little thumb on this throat. Jim wasn’t one who gave up hope, and even though it did not sound as if he had completely giving up, Jamie knew that he was struggling.

“If there is a God left worth fearing in this crazy old world, Jim,” he said, “I can’t afford to know him. And neither can you: we both have too much to lose now that there are things he could take from us. We’ve lost enough already, and I don’t know about you, but I’m going to fight tooth and nail for everything that’s left.”

Jim put a hand over Jamie’s on the reins, and he could just barely catch a hint of the smile as the captain looked over his shoulder. “I’ll give it all I’ve got, Jamie,” he promised, and the amount of love in those words was heartbreaking to him, because accompanied with the striking pallor on the Captain’s usually bright and jovial features, it seemed that he was already almost at the end of all he had.

Jamie settled closer to Jim as much as he could in the saddle, wanting to make good on whatever was left of that promise. The small coiling worm that had woken in his gut had grown and was roiling angrily. Time seemed to tick past his ears in seconds of sand: a rushing hiss of what he couldn’t reach out and catch no matter how firm or desperate his fist.

A near howling wind shrieked up amongst the trees when night truly fell. It was all that Jamie could hear over the pounding of Blenheim’s hooves over the turf. He’d hastened them on when Jim had fallen asleep against him. The poor child had actually asked permission first, and Jamie only let him after the other man had promised to wake up. He felt hideous for forcing such an unrealistic term when it was likely Jim would hardly have any option in the matter. He was still wounded, had suffered a cold night and a long ride, and was likely on the last legs of his standing worsening condition.

Riding on swiftly, and consequently loudly, in the night was an act of panic on Jamie’s part, but he found he didn’t care too much when the alternative was sitting in a cold grip around Jim’s neck. If they could reach Calais, or anywhere that was somewhere with British soldiers and medical supplies then it would be worth the risk.

Every once in a while a concussive vibration would rattle through him from the air, but as far as he looked he could not see the fire or the mortar or hear the sounds of war. It came to a point, after what felt like a million eternities, that he believed he could very well have been re-living the cross fire experience from the state of desperation and exhaustion his mind was in. His hands shook as they clung to the reins, but he was unsure how long he would be able to maintain his hand before that cold grip settled around his own neck.

A bright light shot out of the darkness ahead of him, and he jerked the leather halter to get the steed to halt. Blenheim whinnied in a start, jumping his front legs up in a short rear as he attempted to slow down and change direction as Jamie had demanded of him. But before Jamie could even redirect him another dozen lights sprang out of the darkness, illuminating the edges of a glen and the encampment of men among the sapling oaks.

A half-circle enclosed the way ahead of him, and a shout went up among the approaching men. Jamie’s heart clenched painfully against his teeth where it sat thundering, until it was that he realized the call that went up was not German.

It was English, blessedly, blessedly English.

“Identify yourselves!” a firm voice cried from the darkness beyond the reach of the nearest lamp. There was something familiar in it, but Jamie’s panic kept his thoughts scattered between his ears as he sucked in a great sigh.

“I am Major James Stewart of His Majesty’s Yeomanry,” he barked with all the authority he could muster. Surprisingly the volume of his voice was still booming with command, if not rasped around the edges. “And my wounded companion is Captain James Nicholls of the same division.”

A smattering of hushed and skeptical voices rose around them, and Jamie clenched his teeth, doing his best to refrain from hysterics. He wondered, if they didn’t believe him, as he was without papers or valid proof other than what his mouth could tell, if they would accept his begging and allow Jim to be attended to, or if the poor body of the prone would be treated as a spy as well.

“Major Stewart!”

It was the same voice that had come forward from all the rest and the man to whom it belonged stepped into the light of the lamp now but a few paces from he and his horse. Jamie nearly jumped out of the saddle at the sight of him.

He even needed a moment to catch his breath before he could issue a greeting. “Sergeant Major Singh,” he said, his voice positively broken with delight. The man must have been one of the few who had gotten away mounted, and as they had, made his way towards Calais.

“By God, Major Stewart,” the man replied, “I can barely believe the sight of you! Word has already been sent to England of the charge’s failure, and the Germans had even provided a list of captured. Your name was on it, and yet here you stand!” The man shook his head, holding out a hand in offering. “Come down, and we will share the good news.”

Jamie took the other man’s hand, but did not get down as the offered hand intended him to. He felt his face settle into a grim line. “I cannot bear all good news in such dark times, Sergeant Major Singh. You must help us; we’ve ridden through the night and the rain to get here, and Captain Nicholls has been wounded from the start. We must get him to medical attention. Immediately.”

Singh looked over his shoulder. “Prepare two beds,” he shouted at the crowd of collected and strangely smiling faces. Apparently their return was somewhat of a spectacle, and understandably so: so few had walked away from that horrible maneuver that any and all recovered men were a miracle. He then looked back to Jamie, his eyes searching Jim’s still form. Jamie was sure that the other man looked dead, but he could feel Jim’s breathing, faint though it was.

This was no dream. This was real.

“Come quickly, then,” he said, leading them into the camp. “It is likely that we will have to send the two of you on to Calais in the morning with the ambulance; our supplies are low and we cannot afford to keep yet more wounded.”

Something in that statement gave him pause, and the Major looked down at his fellow soldier. “Sergeant Major, I think you misunderstand,” he stated. “I am not wounded. It’s only Jim that needs medical attention.”

The chuckle that Singh gave actually startled him, and the other man looked back at him with a knowing and somewhat skeptical smile. “After a ride through the rain and the cold of night? I think not, Jamie,” he replied. “Quite seriously, I would not doubt that you are _ill_ enough to proceed on to Calais. No need to separate you from your company, eh?”

All he could manage was a hushed thank you as they reached the medical tent and dismounted. Jim had finally stirred, but his conscience was a dim and fevered thing that worried at the edges of Jamie’s already frayed heart. He watched as the attending medical officers tended to him, knowing that his turn on the “table” would be next.

Singh’s hand was on his shoulder. “We have all gone a very long way, Major Stewart,” he said, but the words barely sank in as the severity of Jim’s wounds finally came to light as his coat and shirt were removed. Jamie’s stomach churned, and he was sure he visibly paled. “But you I think tonight have gone the furthest, and while I am still able, I think for that you should be rewarded.”

Jamie looked to Singh for a moment, nodding only once. The other man’s hand left his shoulder. “Even so, we’re not done yet.” He stepped forward into the tent. “Not by a long shot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will likely copy-edit this chapter sometime later; I therein apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors. This is my first chapter on the keyboard of my new laptop, so I'm still acclimating to it. Have patience and everything will likely be fixed in time.


	3. The Infirmary Men May Count Me Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By the way this whole foo-fuckin' raddy-ha is all because of the work of two lovely people: [black_nata's gifsets](http://black-nata.tumblr.com/post/16213037143/au-captain-nichols-and-major-stewart-survive-the) and [aeon_entwined's collaborative work](http://brodinsons.tumblr.com/post/16400377127/and-then-amanda-went-above-and-beyond-the-call-of). They're both fucking awesome. Go read all of their things and love their tumblrs. You won't regret it.

The bells were silent in France as well.

It was strange to him, standing at the heavily curtained window and watching the midnight hours pass in perfect silence and absolute darkness. The tolling of the bell was missing, masked behind the cloud of war just as the stars were shied away behind the cloud of the storming sea. He didn’t favor the absence of the bells; regardless of how utilitarian a measure it was. It made the nights seem endless: just a long dark blindfold drawn over the eyes of those on the road to the guillotine.

Morning came in slow strokes of tenuous gold beneath the blackness of the night-glutted cloud. It was as a wavering candle, piercing a glossy stitch-work tapestry of blushing color across the brow of the sea.

When he could at last discern the cobbles of the street in front of the cottage, he threw open the curtains, letting the tide of the light roll in. The day had finally dawned, and with each moment of passing sunlight, hope blossomed as a frosted bud to the warmth of spring. Every night since that first one at the English camp his heart had spent wrapped and bound to Jim’s wounds under white satin, and it felt to him like each and every one was never reaching their end until the long-awaited daybreak came to relieve him.

He wondered how much time they would give him before they shipped him back to England. Sparing only a fleeting glance behind him at the man rested across the chaise, he swallowed a knot of apprehension with some difficulty. Even a mild case of pneumonia such as he had warranted return to England, and he had been healthy enough for the journey across the channel since they’d arrived in Calais. Singh had been pulling strings on his behalf, but there would only be so long before they would ship him out without his company.

As a bed-sitter, all he could do was look back and lament over promises he did not know if now he would be allowed to keep. He ghosted a shaking hand over his own clammy face, finding his fates and hopes and mercies once again beyond the reach of his mortal hands. The impossibility of it all made him sick with worry, and he did not know what trust he had left in him to place in a higher power.

That did not prevent him from begging in prayer: it was the only thing he had left to do.

He felt the air shift in the room. It was such a subtle thing that he didn’t know if any other sense he had could have perceived it. He was not even sure that his known senses were what had sensed it at all. It came on like a forgotten knowledge, whispering into the corners of his mind like a secret truth.

Jim’s lengthened intake of breath shouldn’t have been such an event, but Jamie had been listening to the other man breathe for days. He knew the sighs of sleep, knew the panicked gasps of fever. This was none of those. This was a kind of breath that Jamie had always secretly coveted, especially those of Jim’s.

This was the breath of waking, such a simple _known_ sound to his ears after so many stolen dawns draped in very different linens.

It felt like theft, being able to be the first to watch those lucid blue eyes truly open for the first time in days. Unrepentant, he looked on through the corners of his eyes as the emboldened morning light danced across Jim’s eyes in coaxing steps, bringing the man further and further out of his former fevered haze. 

The acuity with which Jim looked at him in the next moment was somewhat startling. If anything he’d been expecting confusion, some minor disorientation at what circumstantial changes had come to fruition in his absence. He had not been anticipating sharp understanding so quickly discerned; not heartbreakingly warm affection after so much pain and torment and loss.

There was a gentle moue of concern on Jim’s face, and Jamie couldn’t help but wonder at its very presence. For Jim to be the worrier was one of the most absurd things he’d seen in a long while. “Why the long face, Jamie?” he asked, his voiced rasped by disuse but no less gentle. That way about him was something that would undoubtedly never be broken.

A response was lost on him for a moment and in his internal struggle he looked away. “I thought I’d lost you, Jim. I thought they’d gunned you down,” he said to the floor before he brooked up the courage and looked over at the other man. “I really thought that after all of it, they’d really gotten you.”

“Well, they had,” came Jim’s earnest response, and the truth of it cut a cruel deep wound in him. “But,” he continued after a moment, drawing Jamie’s eyes up from the floor once more. “You saved me, didn’t you?” Jamie was left gritting his teeth for a moment, willing the tears away before he noticed the outstretched hand that Jim silently offered him.

He closed the distance between them in slow strides, afraid that each step would falter if he did not pay critical attention to it. When he was close enough, he reached out and pressed their palms together, gathering Jim’s hand to his heart as he sat down on a sparing free place on the chaise next to Jim’s narrow hip. “I got us this far,” he admitted, brushing a thumb over the curl of Jim’s knuckles. “But only because you were with me.”

Jim’s long fingers intertwined with his, and he felt like a little piece of the world slipped back into place. “Even I wasn’t so sure about that for a while.” The admission was a chilling one, and his underlying worry took over for a moment as he brushed a freed hand over Jim’s brow. He was still warmer than he should have been, and paler and thinner than ever. Yet none of that detracted from his winsome features. It only complimented them in ways that made Jamie wonder over the worth of strife, when it made peace and prosperity look so much more beautiful by comparison. “My thoughts were jumbled and lost, and I was so scared without you in that place with me.”

For some reason Jamie laughed. It was a quiet thing, but as he looked down at the worry on Jim’s face he couldn’t help himself. “Didn’t you get the order, Jim?” he asked, leaning down until their foreheads were pressed together, their noses meeting. “You and I are never apart. Not here or anywhere else. We’re one.” He laughed again, this time a bit more strongly as Jim smiled brightly along with him. “I don’t go cuffing Germans or tearing off my sleeves and riding through rainstorms in France for just anyone, you know.”

“That _was_ a rather stupid thing to do,” the man beneath him reprimanded playfully, and he took the time to look affronted in spite of the fact that that smile did nothing but bring him a joy he could have sworn he’d forgotten. “You could have lost your own fist and frozen not only your arms but the rest of you. And we’re not much good if half of us cuffed up by Germans and cold as ice.”

“I would have taken on the Kaiser himself, given up both my sleeves, gone and torn off the sleeves of the King himself, and tracked us both through a blizzard if it meant being able to have you with me,” he proclaimed. Jim laughed again, but kept it gentle to surely keep from aggravating the infection in his lungs. The cold really had done a number on them both, but it seemed like a trivial travail now compared to what had been accomplished before.

Jim’s lips were on his cheek, and he literally almost groaned. He had been _dying_ for a kiss since the whole thing had started, and even though it was nothing more than a demure, creamed little kiss, it was more than enough to almost devolve him. It was he who almost instigated the meeting of their lips before he remembered something and drew back just in enough time to put a finger to Jim’s lips.

“Hold on one minute,” he said, earning himself a beseeching expression from the man beneath him. He merely smiled warmly, standing and doing his best not to shift the couch too much. Walking much more swiftly to a table a short distance away, he made to reach for the implements on it just as the door cracked open.

Sergeant Major Singh stood on the threshold, looking apologetic for intruding until he noticed that there had actually really been no intrusion. He straightened nonetheless, saluting them both. Jamie only nodded, but he noticed that Jim took the effort to give a salute back regardless of how much it probably pained him.

“Major Stewart,” the third man addressed. “Captain Nicholls. My apologies for not knocking.” Jamie busied himself as he anticipated the Sergeant to address their now awakened companion. He and the other commander had exchanged more than enough words: all that was to be said had been said between them, and for that he was thankful. “It is good to see you bright-eyed once again, Captain Nicholls. News of your recovery will be of great relief to the nurses.”

“I would imagine,” Jim replied, and Jamie could hear the smile in his voice. “Please do extend my thanks to them if you see any of them before I have the chance. I am most indebted to them, it seems.”

When he turned back to face them both, Singh was shaking his head in denial. “Not at all, Captain Nicholls. We were merely thankful that we were able to assist you in time.” Singh then looked to Jamie. “I will go and alert the nurses presently, though I doubt one will be in very quickly. More wounded have come in from the western front, which I must also supervise and attend to. If you will excuse me.”

The door shut silently behind Singh, and Jamie was somewhat thankful for the delay. Just as now he was thankful that they as officers had been allotted a more private quarter. It would make Jim’s recovery easier on both of them, if only for sanitation reasons. He pulled up an ottoman closer to the arm of the sofa where Jim’s head was cradled against a pillow. Gently helping the other man to sit up slightly, he then offered the glass of water that he’d collected from the pitcher across the room.

The confusion still on Jim’s face when Jamie offered him the glass of water was probably one of the most endearing things he’d seen in a long while. “Thank you,” he said automatically, before adding, “but I’m not particularly thirsty Jamie.”

He held the glass out to the other man until he took it, leaning against the arm of the chaise. “Just drink a bit of it anyway,” he urged with a slim smile, one that seemed to do nothing to assure Jim of his intentions.

When Jim had gotten at least several mouthfuls down, Jamie offered to take the glass from him, leaning in closer than he had before, saying against Jim’s lips, “Now if you don’t mind.” It was all the warning Jim got before Jamie took the time to actually kiss him on the mouth, but Jim didn’t stay startled for long as he very quickly melted into it as he always did.

They parted without any loss of breath, but Jamie was smirking essentially against Jim’s cheek as he nuzzled the other man’s chin. “We both know that your morning breath is unusually awful anyway,” he chose to explain. “And the doctors sloshed you with so much whiskey to keep you numb and happy that I would probably pass out from kissing you without some kind of wash first.” Jim’s laughter was warm on his cheek, and a soft thrumming reality in his ears. The younger man silenced all too soon, and Jamie could feel Jim’s brow furrow.

“I won’t get you ill, will I?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

“I’m already ill,” he replied lightly, making Jim turn to look at him with even more worry. He smiled broadly in spite of Jim’s obvious trepidation. “I supposed you missed that order too, but we’re both ill. As soon as you’re well enough we’ll be going back to England for proper care.”

Some other shadow of fear colored Jim’s expression, and Jamie cupped his chin in the palm of his hand, feeling like he had the world pared down into the tiny space between the heel of his palm and the tips of his fingers. And he would have done anything to make the world in that little space devoid of fear and doubt. “But you’re more well than I, Jamie,” Jim said, his darting blond brows contorted. “They’ll certainly send you off first, or you’ll recover first and be sent back over here where I can’t follow you –”

“James Nicholls.”

Jim was quiet.

“I solemnly swore on my life and whatever honor I had left in this life that I would never leave you. And to that, I hold.”


	4. When I've Gone To Find My Ain True Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By the way this whole foo-fuckin' raddy-ha is all because of the work of two lovely people: [black_nata's gifsets](http://black-nata.tumblr.com/post/16213037143/au-captain-nichols-and-major-stewart-survive-the) and [aeon_entwined's collaborative work](http://brodinsons.tumblr.com/post/16400377127/and-then-amanda-went-above-and-beyond-the-call-of). They're both fucking awesome. Go read all of their things and love their tumblrs. You won't regret it.

Jim’s ribs were stuttering beneath his hands as the other man gasped for breath between each of his keening whines. His arms were wrapped around Jamie’s neck, and he could feel them shake as the other man ratcheted upwards towards the end of his self-control. He often prided himself on how thoroughly and efficiently he could work Jim’s usual complacent patience into a wired frenzy. And even if perhaps that frenzy didn’t constitute more than a night’s worth of harangued and wanton cries, it was more than enough for him. He’d worked hard enough to get them both to 1919 to not take even the slightest thing for granted. So every ghosting touch of long fingers against his skin, every silky curl of hair in his hands, every night or morning or day spent in such beautiful company, no matter the quietness, was worth what he had paid.

He would take any man to Hell with him sooner than he would hear those sentiments denied.

Nuzzling under Jim’s chin, he canted his hips with an almost vicious snap. Jim’s wail was too breathless to actually have volume, but Jamie could tell in the tenseness of the man’s thighs braced against his hips that the lack of volume was not an indicator for lack of investment. He smiled, kissing at a lean collarbone and slowing to a more languid, rolling beat.

The man beneath him groaned loudly, gripping Jamie’s arms and _writhing_ as his spine curled off the mattress. “No,” he bemoaned loudly, having seemingly located his voice again. “Jamie, come _on_.” He tried to roll his hips upward, but Jamie pinned him down bodily for a moment and watched him squirm as he tried to re-ignite the friction.

“This is for last week,” he explained, his voice light as if he were discussing something as arbitrary as the weather. It astounded even himself that at this point he had enough control of his own vocal chords to do so. He would much rather have been whispering sincerities or proclaiming oaths in the coming moments of passion, but as much as Jamie was a lover, he was also a thinker. And he still had a _point_ to make. “And the fact that it’s essentially all your fault that we’re delayed on breaking that colt. I could barely sit down for tea before Wednesday.”

“If you want me to apologize,” Jim said breathily, his eyes rolled shut and his brow furrowed as his head rolled back onto the pillows, “I’m really not going to. Because I’m certainly not sorry, and you really aren’t either no matter how much you might complain.”

Jamie snapped his hips forward for that, and Jim would have shot upright if Jamie weren’t still pinning him. “Complaining?” he intoned curiously. “Oh, I think you misunderstand me entirely. I’m not complaining. I am merely promising swift retribution.” He nipped his way down Jim’s neck. “For putting us behind schedule, I merely took on the right to equally inconvenience you.”

The laugh he got in response let him know that Jim finally caught on to his little scheme. “You bastard,” he murmured against Jamie’s mouth as he moved to kiss him. “You’re just doing this to make me look like a fool in front of Charlie.”

He hummed against Jim’s lips in response, slowly working back up to their former pace. “He’s had a rough few years. He’ll need something to laugh at,” he said, never quite breaking the contact of their lips before deepening the kiss to quiet the unruly blond in his hands. 

Jim was whining against his mouth again within mere seconds of their old pace being re-achieved, and Jamie held out until what he very keenly perceived to be the last possible moment before reaching down between them to humor Jim’s neglected arousal. Jim shook apart with a moan a handful of thrusts later, the curve of his spine sharp as it curled their bodies together into one line. He followed suit within the splitting of the second, too wound into that united line to be detached from the experience.

They were both trembling as they panted against each other, the final blushing hues of dawn emboldened into a regally pale blue. The prideful light of day caught on the unruly curls just behind Jim’s ear, and he nuzzled back into that warm little space where there was only light and that silky softness. Where there was only life in the present, and no haunting memory of the war of the past.

Jim’s light laughter was a rumble like distant thunder, and a whirl of trees and darkness and rain passed behind his eyes as he curled in closer to the body of the man he so loved. “Though I’m not terribly opposed to the idea of making Charlie laugh a bit, even if it is at my own expense,” he murmured, sounding as lugubrious as Jamie felt, “I am opposed to making him wait.” The younger man wrapped a long arm around Jamie’s shoulder, squeezing gently as he kissed at Jamie’s slowly graying hairline. “And if we both don’t get cleaned up soon, I know we won’t get there before four.”

He mumbled something unintelligible against the other man’s shoulder, quite content to just lay on Jim for a while. For however long he damn well pleased, actually, but he knew that wasn’t strictly speaking an option. He had initiated the arrangements to be made for Charlie once he’d gotten word from one of his mates at the home office that Waverly had been found alive. It wouldn’t be fair to his war hero friend if he bottomed out at the last minute just because he was feeling lazy and far too attached to the idea of a second round.

“At least Charlie won’t mind if we’re a _little_ late,” he finally replied, rolling himself out and over the other man to the edge of the bed. “He’s quite used to you being tardy.”

“Me?” Jim asked, and incredulous smile on his face. “If anyone had a reputation back then, it was _you_. Ask Charlie sometime about all of the creative little yarns that he and the other men would come up with as to the exotic methodology you had for making me tardy.”

Scowling at the thought, Jamie reached for a pair of trousers that Jim had left folded on a chair next to the window. He glanced out the window over the little farm, and idly counted the horses they had stabled. All of them were accounted for, which was more than he had hoped for considering the wild streak of the new colt they’d taken on.

“I think I’ll pass on that particular conversation if you don’t mind,” he said, slipping halfway into the trousers before realizing they were going to be hanging around his ankles all day no matter how trimly he rolled them up. At the sound of a light laugh, he looked up to find Jim also standing, looking at him with the softest, most sarcastic little expression on his face.

He thinned his lips at the comment he knew was coming. “After all these years,” Jim said, holding a hand out as Jamie kicked the trousers off and all but threw them at him, “and you still can’t tell the difference between your trousers and mine.”

“Please do alert me when it is up-graded to a Royal Offense,” he said, making to pick up his own proper trousers before smugly making off with Jim’s shirt. In that area at least, they had similar fittings. He worried that one of these days his gut would catch up with Jim’s cooking, but that day stayed off on the horizon for a bit longer. “Come along now, Jim my lad, mustn’t be late,” he said, slipping to rush down the stairs before Jim could do something unspeakably charming to make him regret his teasing.

He didn’t quite manage to escape the pair of socks that Jim managed to skillfully throw at his head, but he considered walking away so unscathed a personal victory.

The ride into town was a short one, but they raced on the path that ran alongside the rail tracks all the same. They had to make joy in the small moments, knowing that a fleck of gold might be outweighed by the stone surrounding it, but that it shone no less gloriously in spite of its size. Their race, in the end, actually insured their punctuality: allowing them to arrive at the small station just moments before the huffing engine pulled in. They dismounted, eagerly tethering their horses and standing respectfully at the back of the crowd of people assembled to welcome the last straggling soldiers.

Their tardiness did not spare them attention, however. To welcome their comrade they had taken on their regalia once more. With new woolen coats and medals abreast, they probably looked quite the pair. It pleased Jamie to think that they would be three soon; three survivors of but one horrible day that was memory enough for a lifetime of war. Only now, here at the end, they had gray hair and scars and wrinkles of age and survival and on top of all that, years of memories of war. Years that would stretch into lifetimes, it felt as they faced down the ruins that came with peace.

When he had become an officer, he had wanted to have his name on record and remembered. He wanted to be profound and heeded and all the other things that young men wanted to be before they realized what the important things actually were.

The sunlight caught on a little blond curl peeping out from beneath Jim’s cap, and Jamie stared transfixed by it for a moment. Important things like being remembered best by the people he had loved and been loved by, like living to see the sun turn things gold, and the snow turn things white, and the world turn again and again beyond days he felt should have ended the world.

“My _God_.”

Jamie looked to Jim’s face then, finding his companion’s blue eyes wide. He followed the other man’s gaze, for a moment not comprehending what his almighty surprise was about. That was not until he picked out Charlie amongst the small throng exiting the carriage, patting a long tall horse on the neck with a smile on his face. Waverly looked a bit more weary around the eyes than he used to, but seemed otherwise intact in spite of the severe treatment that he had purportedly suffered at the hands of a German POW camp. He took a second sparing look at the horse, only to have his mind come to a screaming halt.

He probably should have been able to identify that horse from the second it stepped off the train, and he felt a fool for having not. It was likely that he should have felt even more a fool for standing before a whole throng of people with his jaw slack like some backwater illiterate, but his shock was pervasive. By God’s will, Joey was walking off that train, admittedly with a few scars for his wear and tear, seeming very much his charismatic self.

“I can’t believe it,” Jamie murmured, noting that the boy leading Joey had suffered a severe gas burn. He pitied the lad; he’d been in a strategizing bunker by the time that horrible stuff had been unleashed on his fellow soldiers. “Jim, is that-”

The end of his question trailed off as he sprang through the crowd after his fellow. Jamie had just caught up with him as Jim broke through the front of the slowly disbursing crowd. The surprise that Jim was still kicking was supposed to have been a gentle one on Waverly; who had been so removed and otherwise ill upon returning that he had not yet gotten the news delivered to him. He only hoped that the other man wouldn’t keel over in shock.

Waverly, after all, had been the one who had informed Jamie of Jim’s fall in the field, that day that seemed so long ago. To discover like a slap in the face that his supposition of losing a close friend from what felt to be so many years behind them was undoubtedly not the easiest way to take the revelation.

The four of them stood staring at each other for a long moment. Waverly looked shell-shocked, almost pale, as if he could not believe what stood before him, even if he could literally have reached out and touched it for himself. The boy looked equally shocked, and Jamie had understood why: he had been the one who had tracked down what had become of Jim’s precious sketchbook, only to have discovered it already mailed to the boy after Jim was believed dead in the field. The tension he felt like he could have reached out and squeezed, but didn’t dare try and disturb what felt to be such a tenuous moment.

Unsurprisingly, it was Joey who made the first move. When Jim had broken through the crowd his ears had perked towards the new arrival, and now his great head leaned forward. He took a few steps towards Jim, before snorting and making to nip at the equally stunned man’s hat. Jim, broken from the spell, rubbed an enamored hand over his former mount’s neck, laughing in that little way of his that made the world lighten up a bit.

Later on, he couldn’t remember much of what was said in those following moments. They were a blur of smiling and laughing and embracing. He even gave the boy, Albert, who he had never met and didn’t know worth a damn, a good clap on the shoulder for his finest of services. Where in days passed he would have retained an authority amid these lower ranking men, he instead felt like he had passed on that mantle to someone else. Some other young, prideful, ambitious lad could hold it up for him. He only had the strength and the room in his life to hold close what he needed to. And if that was a smile, or a warm shoulder to wake up on in the morning, or a kiss on the cheek at midnight, it was enough for him to call his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wait, was that smut? If you squint? Or maybe if you excuse my horribly vanilla attempts? Or you can just ignore it and drown in the fluff. Either way. Anyway, this is the end! Finally! This has been a great project and even though it's taken me nearly a year to finish, it was a good show.
> 
> And you know, strangely enough, if anyone had told me when I saw this movie a year ago that I would within the next year be going to see the live stage production at the New London Theatre I probably would have laughed. And yet here we stand. Anyway, thanks for reading. Au revoir.


End file.
